So long, "hope"; by the looks of a new sleek campaign video, this Obama campaign has a new favorite word: "tough. " President Obama faced tough decisions, tough choices and plenty of tough luck in his term in office, and the president demonstrated toughness in return. Or so goes the narrative in a much-hyped 17-minute extended campaign ad released Thursday night by his campaign. The video was directed by Academy Award winner Davis Guggenheim and narrated by Tom Hanks. It borrows from news clips, speeches and behind-the-scenes White House photos to zero in on the decision points the campaign likes best -- bailing out the auto industry, passing the healthcare law, killing Osama bin Laden and removing troops from Iraq.

WASHINGTON - Well aware that unions played a prominent role in supporting the incumbent's effective ground game, the AFL-CIO celebrated President Obama's reelection, though its leadership was keen to emphasize that its fight isn't over. “Working people all across the country are waking up today with a renewed sense of faith in our future,” AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said at the beginning of a news conference Wednesday. “Last night, you saw what our nation is - Latinos, young people, African Americans, union families, a very vibrant multiracial, multi-ethnic, multigenerational country whose electorate and leaders are slowly becoming more representative of who we are,” he said.

SPRINGFIELD, Ohio - President Obama accused Mitt Romney of frightening auto workers for political gain here Friday as he tries to turn concern about the future of the auto industry into votes for his reelection. In a gymnasium filled with 4,000 supporters, Obama hammered Romney for television ads suggesting Jeep jobs may be on their way to China. Union leaders report that workers at the Toledo plant have been calling to find out if they're losing their jobs. “You don't scare hardworking Americans just to scare up some votes,” Obama said.

Voters face a stark choice next week, or so we've been told over and over. But in at least one realm, we the people face almost no choice at all -- fashion. If you believe clothes are the measure of the man, Mitt Romney and Barack Obama are closing in on one and the same. In the era of "gotcha" memes and gaffe patrols, it's pretty clear that these guys' handlers have decided to keep the sartorial choices as bland as possible. That fits right in with radically narrow dress code that already prevails inside the Beltway: dark suit, boring tie (red, blue or bipartisan blah)

TAMPA, Fla. - As Mitt Romney released more misleading claims about President Obama and the auto bailout on Tuesday, officials at GM and Chrysler weighed in and said the statements put forward by Romney about job losses and the offshoring of jobs were false - an unusual move for corporations, which tend to avoid entering the fray of partisan politics. Romney released a new radio ad in Ohio that continued to imply that Chrysler, the parent company of Jeep, had outsourced production to China, and in a new accusation, claimed that GM was moving 15,000 American jobs to China.

Arguing that it was unseemly for the federal government to be a major investor, The Times' editorial board urged the Obama administration Friday to stop waiting for General Motors stock to climb and to start selling the government's remaining stake in the automaker. It's clear that taxpayers would lose billions of dollars if Washington unloaded its GM stock now; just how large the loss would be, however, depends on how you look at the initial loans. The Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program has a simple way of calculating how much the taxpayers have gained or lost on TARP loans: It looks mainly at the amount of the loan and the dollars of principal repaid.

One of President Obama's talking points on the campaign trail has been the revival of General Motors and Chrysler, which would almost certainly have gone into liquidation had his administration not kept them afloat through a government-led bankruptcy and restructuring in 2009. But a commercial that Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has been airing in Ohio (and online) tries to cast Obama's actions in a considerably more negative light. That's not surprising in and of itself.

Readers from Los Angeles to New York, from Canada to Australia, were irate, chagrined, understanding and perplexed by the efforts of Detroit's three big automakers to obtain federal funds to shore up their faltering operations. But most of all, they want to see change -- even if it takes federal money to make that happen. And they have some ideas to go along with proposals in Congress, where lawmakers are expected to consider a rescue plan this week.

Don't expect Wall Street's turmoil to ebb in the year's last full week of trading as investors face questions about an auto bailout, the banking crisis and the Federal Reserve's final rate-setting meeting of 2008. The market, still hovering at decade lows, has yet to show any sign of a traditional year-end rally. And in the next few days it will face a number of tests that could determine whether investors are able to get past all the negative economic news to end the year on a bright note.

The congressional push to help U.S. automakers was generally cast in terms of protecting the reeling national economy from another body blow -- the collapse of one or more of Detroit's Big Three. But in killing the stopgap rescue plan worked out by President Bush and congressional Democrats, conservative Republicans -- many from right-to-work states across the South -- struck at an old enemy: organized labor.

TOLEDO, Ohio - The demand for Jeep Wranglers outstrips supply these days, so the assembly line keeps cranking straight through the lunch shift at the Toledo factory where Chrysler builds them. "I'm putting a new conveyor in right here," Tyson Stoll, who manages part of the plant, said Thursday as workers bolted axles onto each chassis rolling down the line. He pointed to tires running through a shiny balancing machine. "This is brand-new equipment," Stoll said. Across the floor was another sign of the plant's revival: Beeping forklifts were making their way around a vast warehouse recently built to accommodate the growing stacks of crates full of Wrangler shock absorbers, clutches and other equipment.

SPRINGFIELD, Ohio - President Obama accused Mitt Romney of frightening auto workers for political gain here Friday as he tries to turn concern about the future of the auto industry into votes for his reelection. In a gymnasium filled with 4,000 supporters, Obama hammered Romney for television ads suggesting Jeep jobs may be on their way to China. Union leaders report that workers at the Toledo plant have been calling to find out if they're losing their jobs. “You don't scare hardworking Americans just to scare up some votes,” Obama said.

Re "Romney ad blasts Obama on auto industry," Oct. 30 The article states that one of Mitt Romney's ads "erroneously implies that the president's actions prompted a car manufacturer to send jobs overseas. " That is probably true, but not nearly as outrageous as the president saying that Romney would have let General Motors go bankrupt or The Times citing Romney's "opposition to the auto bailout," both of which imply that Romney would have let GM go out of business. In a 2008 New York Times op-ed article, Romney proposed saving GM through a bankruptcy restructuring with the government guaranteeing new loans that would be needed to keep it going.

Mitt Romney earned four Pinocchios -- the Washington Post ranking indicating the worst of the misleading campaign statements -- and a "Pants on Fire" label from Politifact for his comment on how he'd be a bigger hero to the nation's car industry than President Obama has been. Specifically, the GOP hopeful contended that Obama's successful bailout of GM and Chrysler had led to jobs being shifted from the United States to overseas. In fact, any overseas jobs are additional jobs created, not jobs taken from this country, and are an indication of the companies' success in selling internationally, which can only be good for this country.

Continuing its assault on a misleading ad by Mitt Romney about the auto bailout, President Obama's campaign has launched a television commercial accusing the Republican of a “lie” for suggesting Jeep would shift American jobs to China. The 30-second ad follows sharp rebukes by Vice President Joe Biden and former President Bill Clinton and signals how important the administration considers the auto bailout in differentiating itself from Romney in key industrial states like Ohio.

AVON LAKE, Ohio — In a sign of continued concern over the political impact of his opposition to the auto bailout, Mitt Romney is airing an ad that blames President Obama for sending auto companies into bankruptcy and erroneously implies that the president's actions prompted a car manufacturer to send jobs overseas. Thousands of jobs in the upper Midwest were tied to the auto bailout — $80 billion in federal loans to GM and Chrysler — that many credit with saving the industry.

TOLEDO, Ohio - The demand for Jeep Wranglers outstrips supply these days, so the assembly line keeps cranking straight through the lunch shift at the Toledo factory where Chrysler builds them. "I'm putting a new conveyor in right here," Tyson Stoll, who manages part of the plant, said Thursday as workers bolted axles onto each chassis rolling down the line. He pointed to tires running through a shiny balancing machine. "This is brand-new equipment," Stoll said. Across the floor was another sign of the plant's revival: Beeping forklifts were making their way around a vast warehouse recently built to accommodate the growing stacks of crates full of Wrangler shock absorbers, clutches and other equipment.

Unexpectedly good news about the government's auto industry bailout has bolstered the case for comprehensive federal regulations for the financial system, President Obama said in his weekly address Saturday. Obama, facing public unease over unprecedented government interventions in the economy, noted that the Treasury Department found that the bailout of General Motors Corp. and Chrysler Group "will end up costing taxpayers a fraction of what was originally feared," because those companies have performed far better than expected after getting federal help.

TAMPA, Fla. - As Mitt Romney released more misleading claims about President Obama and the auto bailout on Tuesday, officials at GM and Chrysler weighed in and said the statements put forward by Romney about job losses and the offshoring of jobs were false - an unusual move for corporations, which tend to avoid entering the fray of partisan politics. Romney released a new radio ad in Ohio that continued to imply that Chrysler, the parent company of Jeep, had outsourced production to China, and in a new accusation, claimed that GM was moving 15,000 American jobs to China.

One of President Obama's talking points on the campaign trail has been the revival of General Motors and Chrysler, which would almost certainly have gone into liquidation had his administration not kept them afloat through a government-led bankruptcy and restructuring in 2009. But a commercial that Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has been airing in Ohio (and online) tries to cast Obama's actions in a considerably more negative light. That's not surprising in and of itself.